Tõnis Kimmel. Intervention dissected

Let me start with a confession. My master’s thesis on this subject was driven by a personal desire to find a basis for architectural practice, which would lack the intellectual dictatorship of the architect. However much we would strive for it, I fi nd that form of architectural dictatorship inconceivable. We will try to embrace a city, a building, and to foresee only the best for it, but actual life will bypass the “best”of our intentions, and is likely to follow a very diff erent course. This road may not seem clearly rational at fi rst and, yet, it may later begin to function in an altogether unexpected way.

Thus I found it necessary to formulate a softer approach which would liberate the city-planner from the role of dictator and enable him/her to number amongst the equal co-participants in this endless wei-ch’i[1] game of life.

The key term in this softer strategy might be “measure of intervention”. Can we control the processes of development without imposing strict limitations upon them and if so then to what extent? To begin off with, let us call this approach “rhizomatic” rather than anarchist. Why? We will return to that later. For the time being it is enough just to mention this idea.

Refuge
In answer to the proposed question, history off ers us the example of a gigantic experiment, which has been clearly observable throughout its development. [2]

Area

2,9 ha

Population density: 11 380

Population

33000

inhabitants per ha

Buildings

ca 350

Floors: mostly 10, the highest 16

Businesses

718

I.e. small enterprises, cafes, shops

Medical institutions

161

Doctors and dentists

In order to understand this experimental setting, Lawrence Liauw has provided us with two central terms: TABULA RASA and LOBOTOMY.[3]

Tabula Rasa
From the end of the 19th century the situation in the region of Guangzhou city in the Pearl River delta becomes interesting. In the mid-century the British conquered the island of Hong Kong; during this period the area of their infl uence comes to extend to the Chinese mainland. The second Beijing convention of 1898 leased to the British the mainland areas facing the island – areas which were to become known as the New Territories. However, located within the New Territories was the fortifi cation of Kowloon[4], which, in accordance with the convention, was to remain under Chinese control. Historians have argued that the reason for such an unusual demand – take a look at the map – may have been a traditional belief that if the Emperor were to surrender even a single city, then he would not be reunited with his ancestors after his death. In 1899 the British colonial powers declared an end to Chinese jurisdiction over the fortifi cation of Kowloon, on grounds of rampant immorality within the garrison. Although the British colonial powers were not threatened by the Chinese military, their actions regarding the fortress were indecisive – probably due to their reluctance to provoke the anger of the Chinese authorities. The fortress, a neutral ENCLAVE, develops rapidly into a VOID which starts to take on a life of its own, largely independent of its surroundings. Although the Chinese authorities had left the fortress, the British guaranteed only short-term leases on its territory. Under such a condition of instability the institutions which were established in the city were not offi ces but schools, churches, old peoples’ homes and workhouses – mostly charitable organisations.

At the end of the 1930’s, despite Chinese protests the colonial powers managed to empty the fortress of its inhabitants, and to demolish most of its buildings predominantly thanks to the compensations off ered to evictees. This accidental experiment would have been almost over had it not been for the war and Japanese occupation of 1940. The confl ict drew another contour onto the map of the experiment: previously the fortress had architecturally belonged to Chinese culture, now its walls were to be used to enlarge the take-off lane of the neighbouring Kai Tak airport. The fortress, built traditionally in accordance with the rules of fengshui, thus lost the last essential element of its MAP. It had already been deprived of access to WATER (Kowloon bay) in the south, due to landfi ll, and the growing city had separated the fortress from the ROCKS in the north. As the walls were being demolished the fortress lost the last remnants of identity and continuity.

After the war had ended, relations between the Chinese and British colonial powers remained tense and before the British could take any preventive action the refugees who began to arrive in Hong Kong from China took advantage of the situation. They wanted to live as they had in China and yet remain beyond the control of either the Communist Chinese or British colonial authorities. For the latter, a historic opportunity had been missed, and all attempts on the part of the colonial powers to endorse changes in the territories of the old fortress were followed by bloody uprisings, sometimes reaching as far as Guangdong and Shenzhen. The colonial power is forced to retreat and any interventionalist policies are abandoned during the coming decades.

The area of the fortress of Kowloon, which we will refer to in the rest of the article as the Walled City, KWC, starts to develop BEYOND THE LAW. Hong Kong police enter the city only in large groups and in search of only the most serious criminals. Naturally, as an area outside of the law, the Walled City attracted criminals. Until the 1960’s, the city is controlled by four TRIAD groups.[5]

In the context of our discussion, the criminal character of KWC should not be over-estimated. In addition to the criminal element, the city is open to doctors and other professionals whose Chinese accreditation is not acknowledged by Hong Kong authorities; the same applies to diff erent small businesses which fi nd far more fl exible circumstances in the Walled City than in the part of the colony controlled by legitimate authorities.

Following an incident in 1963, when the government attempted the demolition of some of the barracks in the city district, a POLITICAL GROUP Kai Fong is established in KWC. The aim of the group is to assist inhabitants in defending their rights; later it will also become involved with real-estate law.

The 1960’s was the period when the police took a more active stance. In 1963 there was an unprecedented number of police raids in KWC: a total of 905, resulting in 732 arrests. Despite such progress, the police forces venture to enter the city only in armed groups of 40 or more men. In 1968 the estimated number of drug addicts in KWC is 5000 people. Both criminal activity and drug addiction still fl ourish, although by this time, they have been forced underground.

The 1960’s are also characterised by the beginning of an explosive growth in the density of the urban environment. Whereas most buildings erected during that decade still have from 3-10 fl oors, in the 1970’s the process becomes a kind of madness, with buildings of up to 14 levels being constructed side by side and with a gap of only an inch between them. Such growth is triggered by the continuous infl ux of new inhabitants. Once a person has entered the city, they will not leave. The changes in the general data of KWC were as follows:[6]

Area:

2,9 ha

Number of inhabitants

Growth

m²/per person

1947

2 000

14,5

1971

10 004

400%

2,9

Late 1980s

33 000

230%

0,88

In 1990, the population density of KWC was seven times that of the most densely populated part of Kowloon city, Mong Kok, and almost thirty times that of the most densely populated area in the Western world, Manhattan. [7]

Lobotomy
1971 is a watershed in the history of KWC. That year the Hong Kong police participated in the handover of buildings in the possession of previous yamen to a Christian charity organisation. As always, Chinese offi cial protests were expected but on this occasion none were expressed. In 1984, as the end of the 99-year lease was approaching, China and the United Kingdom signed an agreement concerning the future of Hong Kong. In January 1987, a half – expected surprise occurred: the British and Chinese authorities issued a common declaration expressing their intentions to demolish the buildings of the Walled City. Simultaneously, offi cials were sent over to KWC to produce a census of all the inhabitants and any property which they would lose in the demolition process. It appeared as though both authorities were concerned only with safety and welfare.

The evacuation of the population was carried out without any major problems and the evacuees received quite reasonable compensations. The Walled City, already emptied of inhabitants, was officially closed in July 1992. The first of three demolition stages began in April 1993.

The course of history was returned to its proper tracks. Of all the old buildings only the yamen was preserved; the area around the yamen was surrounded with a wall and became an archaeological park displaying only objects from aesthetically acceptable periods. The past 100 years in the history of the location and its very unusual community were erased from the memory of the place as if by a LOBOTOMY. The real story of KWC was REPULSIVE and had to be forgotten. It seemed that no one regretted the disappearance of the Walled City. The largest controlled explosive demolition was anticipated with some excitement. Still, this spectacle did not occur, as the complex was demolished by bulldozers in three stages. Crosssections of the complex were revealed for the fi rst and last time.

Error
“Hong Kongers don’t work from the top down. They don’t try to have a fixed ideology and then impose it on the economy, on the society, on the city. Whatever structures come about in Hong Kong and in Asia, they evolve from the bottom up. /…/. They let the society generate, create and innovate to arrive at structures ultimately.”[8]
The Walled City was a perfect embodiment of this above-described mentality.

Although it may be said only in hindsight, because KWC was not designed so much as developed in a particular manner due to the rare coincidence of several factors. In the eyes of the authorities, such development was always a tumour in the tissue of KWC. This uncontrollable development was characterised by a single limitation: building height was not to exceed 45 meters – a limitation which was determined by the proximity of Kai Tak airport. In the late 1970’s there began attempts to improve electricity and water networks in the area, and to exert control over fire safety; however, by then it was too late.

Such “bottom-up planning” is associated with another important phenomenon in the urban building of the new megapolises of the Pearl River delta in South-West China (Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Zhuhai), a phenomenon which Rem Koolhaas refers to as PROVISIONALITY9. In his presentation at the Any conference he emphasised that in these particular cases an ERROR is not necessarily something undesirable, but is a natural part of the processes of planning and building. A house may first be built as UNFIT to be retrofitted or re-built after completion in accordance with current needs. The same applies to planning. Traditional feng shui will be applied retroactively, only after all other efforts have failed.

By 1990 this “error” had developed to the point where 2.[9] hectares of land contained everything needed in a functioning city. By that moment, the population was 33 000 with ca 5.5 square meters of living space per person. No one, once having entered this place, need ever leave it. Leaving the place was legally impossible for many of its inhabitants anyway, since they did not have the necessary documents that would be acknowledged by the colonial power. In addition to living spaces, the Walled City was packed with a variety of small businesses, mainly processing of metal and plastic, shops, catering establishments (for example, it is alleged that 80% of Hong Kong’s fish-balls were produced here).

Rhizomea
However, my focus is not on the density. Rather the aim is to introduce new concepts[10], which would imply new approaches in understanding a city or a building. Amongst the most interesting of these new approaches are the development of transit routes, and the division of functions, which result from breaking with normal typologies.
MULTIPLICITY OF TRANSIT ROUTES. There are routes and unexpected connections, which intertwine both within the massif of KWC, and above it. The street, as a traffi c artery running on the ground level, lost its primary importance here. Instead there were a multitude of diff erent traffi c levels. A shortcut from point A to point B could go through the corridors in-between the houses or over the roof. This resulted from a peculiar building process whereby a building was not erected by laying one level after another over the ground fl oor. Under such conditions of extreme density, a building may extend itself on a particular fl oor at the expense of a neighbouring house, or it may have been squeezed in to the space between already existing houses. Hong Kong architect Aaron Tan (OMA-Asia) claims that this development was caused by THREEDIMENSIONALITY in the acquisition of property.[11]

For example you have a building this high. The next building, before it’s build, the owner here wants to buy the air space over there. And it’s for that they actually build a link way first, so when the building is up to almost the same length they come together, splice, and that’s where the secondary passages come about.[12] One building becomes another or rises ABOVE ANOTHER, stairways and corridors of originally separate buildings merge together, only to part again later.

One couldn’t be sure upon leaving a house that it would be possible to return the same way. The boundaries between different buildings were either blurred or missing entirely. A building’s outline, formerly rigid and static, began to flow, making use of each pre-existing rift left by earlier builders. The traffic network consisted of four parts: the street at the ground level; stairways simultaneously connecting numerous different buildings; connecting corridors becoming the streets and plateaus above the ground level; and the roof.

The only rupture in the densely built massif was the “atrium”, following the shape of the previous yamen buildings in the middle of the block, and the ROOFSCAPE opening out 45 meters above ground. The surrounding areas of the block were for the inhabitants living at its edges, and on the lower levels a place for escaping the claustrophobic BURROW of the Walled City; the roof provided the same opportunity for those inhabiting the upper floors. On the roof there was a place to dry laundry and to keep carrier pigeons; children played and adults relaxed whilst admiring the cityscape and the rock of Lion rising in the distance. Because the upper floors of the buildings were closely built – with very little space between them – it was relatively easy to move across the simple ‘bridges’ from roof to roof. Thus, at higher levels it was common to find a shortcut from point A to point B over the roof.

Paranoia
Aaron Tan has pointed out that an interesting parallel to the escape routes of the Walled City is the paranoid mentality of KWC and Hong Kong as a whole. This society is permanently penetrated by UNSTABILITY: we are dealing here with a society uncertain of its future, especially in the later half of the 20th century, and which needs constantly to create its own identity. This is reminiscent of the gangsters in the films of John Woo – they dress well, talk romantically about humanity, and are themselves always on the run.[13] There is no past, the future is unstable, the only thing to dwell on is the present, and the only possibility to escape this present is to FLEE. Hence a multitude of escape routes is an immanent constituent of this particular society.

Vertical village
The existence of the multiplicity of traffi c routes, with their uncontrolled development, facilitated a more even distribution of social and business functions throughout the whole SECTION. A shop or a café need not be located on the ground fl oor. In the whole block there were just three lifts. Meanwhile, service facilities located at diff erent levels had distinct characters. The ground-fl oor shops and cafes served the general public, including visitors from outside the block. The service units of the higher fl oors often functioned as gathering places for locals. The boundary between a narrow street, often only 1-meter wide, and the surrounding business quarters was blurred. Most shops were separated from the street with metal grilles rather than a stonewall; during opening hours these grilles were lifted – thus a narrow street grew wider by integrating small shops and services into itself. These narrow passageways were still called avenues even though nothing of the kind had been seen in the Walled City for decades.

Life in the block took place under artifi cial lighting 24 hours a day, without a break, thus denying the biorhythms normally dictated by the cycle of day and night. Throughout the day, however, radical changes occurred in the use of the space: what used to be a café during the day became a mahjong den in the evening; corridors and stairways were not only transit routes but functioned also as an environment for play and for communication. This is why the sense of community which developed here was unusual in comparison with a typical high-rise. Often a place was turned into its opposite: a toy factory hiding a drug den; military fortifi cations become a tourist site; a refugee camp becomes the playground of criminal gangs; and the latter fi nally becomes a well-functioning community centre.

Multiplicity
“Chess is indeed a war, but…a coded war, with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go[14] is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even.” Instead of codes and semiology Go/wei-ch’i is “pure strategy” –WAR STRATEGY. “Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival.” [15]

What happened in the territory of Kowloon fortification is, to my mind, directly related to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of rhizome: although these two, the place and the concept, developed as separate entities, they are united by an uncompromising glorification of multiplicity. Let us have a look at the general principles of rhizomatic thinking as presented by Deleuze and Guattari in their article “Rhizome”.[16]

The concept of rhizome originates from botany where it is used to designate a horizontal, subterranean stem of certain plants. This strange “stem” sprouts roots and shoots from its nodes, and thus it has no core root. For this reason the plant does not die when its shoots are destroyed on the surface or when a rhizome itself has been cut through. The most hated varieties of weed such as coachgrass and goutwort are so difficult to defeat precisely because of their rhizomes.

Philosophers Deleuze and Guattari have used this concept to compare different cultural understandings of the relationship between the book and the world; the interest of this article, however, lies with urban planning. According to Deleuze and Guattari, our culture has three different models for a book: root or tree — radicle — rhizome

Congestion
The traditional hierarchical model of the city corresponds to the model of the root or the tree. The latter is a system whereby the development is dependant on a single starting point, which controls everything, and to which one must always return in order to move forward. In the urban environment such points are monumental ensembles on which the attention is usually focussed and from where the less important streets and districts radiate. Such development is determined by dualism or dichotomy: from One, i.e. integral whole, into two, from two to four and so on.

The root or tree is a model used in several vast fields of knowledge such as Noam Chomsky’s[17] generative grammar, psychoanalysis, selective-breeding or even information science. According to this model the expression and the world, just like art and nature, are separated from one other and the former imitates the latter. This model cannot reach the true understanding of multiplicity since it requires the presence of a strong unity. Unity, however, is what blocks the multiplicity of LINES OF FLIGHT.[18]

The theorem of friendship is one of the most explicit
expressions of the root/tree model: in a society where two
people have one common friend, there is someone who is
friends with everybody.

The second model – the radicle-system – refers to the contemporary book, and is more complicated and also more insidious than the root or tree model. On this model, the principal root has been aborted; it has been substituted with an “indefi nite multiplicity of secondary-roots” which “undergoes a fl ourishing development”. The insidiousness of this model is related to the fact that instead of a straightforward linearity of the root or tree model the unity is hidden in a SUPPLEMENTARY DIMENSION – in the unity of the author, intentionality, eternal return (Nietzsche!) etc.

If one were to try to introduce multiplicity into the radicle-system, this attempt would always be curbed by the ever-emerging rules of combination. It would be like attempting to substitute modernism with radical postmodernism – the great uniting idea of modernism has disappeared, however, and now it is the artistic self-expression of the Architect, which cries for power.

“[I]f we’re so oppressed, it’s because our movement’s being restricted, not because our eternal values are being violated.”[19]

The third, RHIZOMATIC thought is characterised by four principles:[20]

Connectivity
Heterogeneity
Multiplicity
Rupture

Connectivity in the rhizome is embedded in the following: any point of the rhizome can always be linked to any other point. Moreover, it is not a mere possibility but something that occurs necessarily. The rhizome is a BURROW assimilating very diff erent functions – it is simultaneously both living space and shelter, a container and escape route. As with the burrow, the rhizome is characterised by an indefi nite number of entryways and exits. The word “indefi nite” ought to be emphasised here: after all, in Kafka’s novel the burrow has, for safety reasons, probably just one entrance causing for its inhabitant as much anxiety as would several entrances for an unforeseeable threat which might emerge from them.

Lines of fl ight within the rhizome evade any usurper and for this reason the rhizome cannot be permanently subjugated. Anything that seems fi xed ought to be approached with caution, since the rhizome tends to conceal its true nature.Functionalism
How does the rhizome fl ee from congestion? Deleuze and Guattari propose a formula of fl eeing as n-1. “One” signifi es here the whole, a dominant centre. The rhizome, the multiple, is not derived from the one; neither is it something to which one is added (n+1). It is constructed instead by an act of subtraction (n-1). “The only way the one belongs to the multiple: always subtracted.”[21] Thus there is just a small step from a hierarchical system, such as classicist city planning, to the multiplicity – the dominant must be eliminated. Accordingly, it would be wrong to talk either of the beginning or of the end of the rhizome: it is always a middle, always IN-BETWEEN. Naturally, the rhizome can be fragmented: its lines of fl ight can be cut by RUPTURES, but the rhizome develops and restores itself in each new cut. This is an essential horizontality and functionality of the rhizome – or its functionalism, if you like. What matters here is how the concept works rather than its ability to refl ect or explain the world.

In short, the qualities of the models of tree/root, radicle and rhizome are as follows:

Deceit
Has Deleuze now fallen into the trap of constructing new oppositions to replace older ones (tree versus rhizome, fl exibility versus rigidity)? Rhizomatic thinking is not yet another modernist revolution which invalidates all previous thought. Instead we are dealing here with the search for lines of fl ight within the existent. Each taproot has its own lines of fl ight which will by-pass the congestion whenever necessary. An animal discovers a new and unknown exit in its burrow. Individuals connect with one another and into a rhizome through transfers of genetic material by viruses; we form a rhizome with our viruses; each tree in the forest has its fungi and beetles with which it forms a SYMBIOSIS. It may happen, of course, that what has escaped ceases to be something it was before, but does this matter?

In addition, multiplicities due to their rhizomatic nature have a tendency to reproduce a tree-like image of themselves. The BEST and the MOST USELESS – potatoes and coachgrass – are always connected, becoming each other’s opposite sides. Both highly concentrated tubers and endlessly expanding and interconnecting plateaus are rhizomatic. It is impossible to give a concrete delimitation. In rhizomatic texts, even the subject is designated by an indefi nite article or by the partitive (some couchgrass, some of a rhizome).

PredestinationIn accordance with the principle of causality, the world seemed to be built in such a way that the major regularities of nature are deterministic and reversible. With suffi cient knowledge of original conditions, we should be able to predict everything; and so the existence of a demon of Laplace who could correctly predict my future thoughts would be a possibility.[22] However:

“I always found this idea rather unconvincing because that would mean that this discussion we are having right now would already have been determined at the time of the Big Bang.”[23] Newton’s physics cannot explain the movements of a pendulum if its starting position has the free end towards the sky. The demon of Laplace will be unable to calculate with any precision which way the pendulum will fall. Thus, the idea of instability and deterministic chaos are introduced: deterministic chaos can only be described in a purely probabilistic manner, but this probabilistic character is not a result of a lack of human knowledge, but rather of the instability of motion itself.[24]

So?The most important in planning would thus be multiplicity – to secure the possibility of development from any point. It may be argued that I have tried to build in this article a rhizomatic system. At the same time, each system displays a tendency towards rigidity and towards marginalising diff erence. The postmodernist turn in architecture moved to break with the RIGIDITY of modernism and to replace it with freedom. Artistically this freedom was achieved; however, this process strengthened the metaphysical position of the creator and “revolution”; originally aiming at the multiplicity it led us back to a closed system. Withdrawal into itself is an essential aspect of every revolution; that is why rhizomatic thought tries to avoid it and makes use of the existent – removing from it the all-encompassing whole which may start to congest exits. It is essential to understand how to maintain fl exibility and how to continue to be fl exible towards the otherness in this process. If one is to judge singular elements only according to the principle of multiplicity, this principle itself becomes an all-encompassing “vertical”. In such a way, an architect may stick with the preconceived idea of free planning in a situation where regular planning may be more efficient.

The issue of intervention occupies a central place in architecture and planning. To what extent, if at all, should a planner intervene in the development of a particular environment? There is no need to dispute the necessity of intervention – this has been proven even in the example of the Walled City. The minor interventions that took place in the Walled City managed to keep the environment more liveable than might have resulted from an entirely uncontrolled development. One of the results of this limited, pragmatic intervention was the roof level across the entire block – something that allowed people to leave the claustrophobic interior of the block and go to “nature”. This “nature” was larger than were most of the parks. Minimal intervention contained building development intensively within the structure of the block, instead of opting for an extensive development towards the sky. It’s very diffi cult to determine the measure of intervention. In the Walled City most of the fl ats lost their access to daylight as a result of uncontrolled development. Is this bad? In places where one can build directly in front of another’s window without any restraint, it is; but if the builder had had a responsibility to fi nd new living spaces for those inhabitants whose fl ats were to remain in darkness, it would not have been so negative. After all, adaptation of the functioning of certain places is inevitable under the changing circumstances of urban environment. That which is dangerous in the dense environment of South- East Asia may turn out to be a virtue in the Nordic sparseness. What would have happened if the measure of intervention in the walled City were greater? Maybe I would have nothing to discuss.

As the example of the Walled City shows, the city is endowed with an ability to develop by trial and error towards structures that function relatively well. On the other hand, Suenn Ho has pointed out that the demolition of the Walled City in 1993 was inevitable. 40 years of ad-hoc development had reached a point where a self-suffi cient community, with a lower crime rate than many communities in the surrounding city of Hong Kong, was destroyed by its past heritage. A further question may be asked: could the intervention of a city-planner have prolonged the lifespan of this district? This question may be answered by examining photographs taken of the Walled City at diff erent times. The photographs taken during the 1980s do not show those buildings that were erected next to the Walled City by colonial powers in the 1960’s, buildings, which in this case were most probably built according to the most progressive ideas of the period. The lifespan of the planned environment turned out to be shorter than that of an environment that developed uncontrollably.

[[14]] The author uses here instead of the Japanese ‘Go’, a Chinese name of wei-ch’i. – Transl.

Mainly groups such as 14 K, King Yee, Sun Yee On and Yee Kwun. (Julia Wilkinson, A Chinese fort. – Girard & Lambot, op.cit.) Original Triads were republican organisations which had emerged in the 17th century in an attempt to overthrow the Manchus rule. After the deposition of Qing dynasty in the beginning of the 20th century they developed into criminal groups.↵

French matematician and astronomer Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749 – 1827) was a strong defender of causal determinism. His hypothetical intellect that knows the exact state of every particle in the universe in any given moment of time, came later to be called the daemon of Laplace. In a deterministic universe, the daemon could compute the future exactly.↵